I explained the whole situation to my wife and she agreed that if she had gotten me the non-archive Taschen that I should have definitely told her because she would have figured it out anyway. She also said she wouldn't be offended if I returned this one and put the money towards the archives.

This is a seperate beast though so I may just keep it. Purdy pictures.

I explained the whole situation to my wife and she agreed that if she had gotten me the non-archive Taschen that I should have definitely told her because she would have figured it out anyway. She also said she wouldn't be offended if I returned this one and put the money towards the archives.

This is a seperate beast though so I may just keep it. Purdy pictures.

I explained the whole situation to my wife and she agreed that if she had gotten me the non-archive Taschen that I should have definitely told her because she would have figured it out anyway. She also said she wouldn't be offended if I returned this one and put the money towards the archives.

This is a seperate beast though so I may just keep it. Purdy pictures.

War-ravaged weapons from 'Full Metal Jacket', eerie papers from 'The Shining', Tom Cruise's driving licence from 'Eyes Wide Shut' … As the Stanley Kubrick archive - all 900 boxes of it - is opened up for the first time, Chris Hastings provides a guide to some of the objects that made movie history. Photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

FULL METAL JACKET - How to make a Vietnam movie in east London - with no military co-operation and just 66 palm trees

Kubrick's 1987 Vietnam war movie, Full Metal Jacket, was shot in Britain because the director, who had been living here since the early 1960s, was too afraid to fly - he turned a soon-to-be demolished gas works in Beckton, east London, into a bombed-out Vietnamese city.

Shortly after starting work in 1984, the director asked Lord Goodman, the former chairman of the Arts Council, to help him get access to the gas works. On 11 July, 1984, Kubrick instructed Derek Hutton, head of PR at British Gas, not to clear away too much once the large smokestacks had been demolished: 'The place has been cleaned up a bit too much and the extra debris would be helpful.'

Kubrick tried, but failed, to persuade the Ministry of Defence to help the production by lending him a helicopter and troops to act as extras. The MoD refused, partly because it felt that the idea had 'little public relations value for the British Army'. On 21 January, 1985, a retired Army officer who was acting as a military adviser on the film wrote to Kubrick to express his disappointment at the MoD's reluctance to get involved. He described the ministry's attitude as 'thoroughly negative and smacking of everything that is worst in the Civil Service - incompetent, record keeping, ignorance, inconsistency and a thoroughly negative lazy attitude'.

Kubrick eventually obtained the weapons used in the film from various sources including licensed weapons-dealers and a Belgian army commander who was a fan of his work. The machete shown above belonged to Adam Baldwin's character, Animal Mother, who in the original script used it to hack off a dead female sniper's head. The decapitation wasn't shown in the film, but the head was. The director recreated the landscapes of Vietnam with dozens of palm trees which were strategically placed on the locations he used in Beckton and elsewhere. On 27 July, 1985, Kubrick was informed by his co-producer, Phil Hobbs, that moving 66 palm trees from Beckton to Rainham marshes over a period of two days was 'no mean task'.

Hobbs wrote: 'I have started negotiations with the river barge company of how much space we would require plus a breakdown of the amount of equipment we would need on both sides to manoeuvre the palm trees to their ships.'

THE SHINING - All work, no play...

In The Shining, which many regard as one of the most chilling horror films ever made, the deranged Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, stuns his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), when he produces the novel that he has spent weeks slaving over.

Yet, instead of a completed manuscript, there were just dozens of pieces of paper with the words 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' typed over and over again - Wendy's first real clue that her husband had gone mad. Kubrick realised the phrase wouldn't mean anything to foreign-language audiences, so he sought out similar phrases from various countries. He then made several different shots of the same scene which were slotted into the appropriate foreign-language version. The script seen in the Italian version of the film, for example, has the phrase 'Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca' repeated over and over again. It translates as: 'He who wakes up early meets a golden day.'

In Stephen King's novel The Shining, which inspired the 1980 film, Jack finds a scrapbook of cuttings that give him an insight into the hotel's past. In the film, the book appears briefly on his desk while he is typing his novel.

Kubrick was very protective of six-year-old Danny Lloyd, who played Jack's son, Danny. The director would work with the boy in such a way that he had no idea that they were making a horror movie. The Kubrick archive contains several items of clothing from the film including pyjamas and jacket worn by Danny and even a pair of Jack Torrance's underpants.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - Alex makes the news

Even those appalled by A Clockwork Orange's excessive violence couldn't deny the 1971 film's unique visual look and the director's attention to detail.

Alex's arrest and the use of the Ludovico treatment, a pioneering form of drug-assisted aversion therapy, are reported in special front pages that Kubrick had produced for the film. For added authenticity, real newspapers were then placed inside the front and back covers.

EYES WIDE SHUT - Licensed to thrill

Not everyone would agree with him, but Kubrick regarded the erotically charged Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999 shortly after his death, as his most important film.

It was inspired by the book Traumnovelle ('Dream Story') by Arthur Schnitzler and, according to documents in the archive, Kubrick had been interested in his work since the 1950s. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married to each other at the time, play a smart New York couple who embark on a journey of sexual and emotional discovery.

Typically, Kubrick lavished much time and effort on details that didn't feature in the film - even going to the trouble of having a replica driving licence made for Cruise's character, William Harford. The archive also has the Venetian masques from the film's celebrated masked ball scene.

There are other links to interviews in the link below of this article.

"A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later." --Stanley Kubrick

The late Stanley Kubrick would have celebrated his 80th birthday this year and this past April also marked the the 40th anniversary of "2001: A Space Odyssey." That almost mystical masterpiece holds a singular place in cinema history, but for me the most enjoyable of Kubrick's many great films was his scathingly funny (and in many ways, culturally prescient) 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," which was nominated best picture and should have taken home the Oscar (sorry all of you "My Fair Lady" fans).

I was digging through a folder of photos here in the stacks of the Los Angeles Times library and I came across this photograph that has no credit on it. I'm assuming it was sent out by Columbia Pictures' publicity department but I can't be sure. As far as I can tell, it never ran in the paper. Anyway, it shows the famously meticulous Kubrick on a ladder presiding over a shot of Tracy Reed (a member of a notable British family, which includes her late cousin, Oliver Reed) who happens to have been the only woman who appeared in the nuclear farce. She plays Miss Scott, the secretary for Gen. "Buck" Turgidson (George C. Scott) but she also pops up in the movie as the woman in the centerfold of the Playboy magazine being read by Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens).

-- Geoff Boucher; Los Angeles Times

Logged

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol

LACMA, Steven Spielberg to Honor Stanley KubrickArtist Ed Ruscha also will be honored at the museum's second annual Art + Film Gala, set for Oct. 27.Source: THR

Following up on the success of its first Art + Film Gala last autumn, which was chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio and museum trustee Eva Chow (wife of restaurateur Michael Chow), LACMA has announced its second gala, taking place Oct. 27.

The event, once again chaired by DiCaprio and Chow, will honor both director Stanley Kubrick and artist Ed Ruscha, both of whom will have exhibitions of their work on view at the museum this fall.

Director Steven Spielberg will pay tribute to Kubrick. Spielberg and Kubrick were collaborators on 2001's AI: Artificial Intelligence, conceived by Kubrick in the 1970s and later written and directed by Spielberg.

The gala -- sponsored again by Gucci (its creative director, Frida Giannini, will be the night's host committee chair) -- raises money for the museum's film initiatives.

Terry Semel, former chairman of Warner Bros. and Yahoo and co-chair of LACMA's board of trustees, said in a release: "I had the honor of working with Stanley Kubrick on the Warner Bros. films Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. It gives me great pleasure to honor Stanley at LACMA, both at the Art + Film Gala and in his retrospective exhibition."

The Kubrick show, opening Nov. 1, covers his career from his early photographs for Look magazine to his film work, represented through annotated scripts, production photos, cameras, costumes and props. It also looks at two projects he never completed, Napoleon and The Aryan Papers. The travelling exhibit originated at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany.

"LACMA has actively taken strides to integrate film into the museum,” said LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg director Michael Govan, noting such exhibits in recent years as Tim Burton and Dali: Painting and Film. "Additionally, Elvis Mitchell continues to produce robust programming with Film Independent at LACMA."

For those who read art-world tea leaves, the timing of the Ruscha honor is interesting given that the artist recently resigned from the board of LACMA's cross-town rival MOCA in a dispute over the direction of the museum.